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The story of actors caught on different sides of the web of intrigue and paranoia that characterises the battles between total, consuming ideologies is an old one. The use of spies and collaborators by different powers in these ideological wars is one that resonates throughout 20th-century history from Northern Ireland to Latin America, SA and of course, the bastion of Western democracy, the US.
There, under the watchful, obsessive eye of FBI director J Edgar Hoover, it was standard practice at the height of the Cold War. In particular, Hoover oversaw the FBI’s now infamous Cointel programme of counter-intelligence, which used covert, often illegal tactics in the monitoring and agitating of groups he believed posed an imminent threat to the stability of the US.
The operations of Cointel were focused with disproportionate paranoid fervour on the Black Panthers, the radical civil rights organisation formed in 1966. Hoover believed they were the greatest threat to American values and democracy and famously warned that “a black messiah” would emerge from their ranks to unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement.
For Hoover, the Panthers were a bigger threat to US national security than either the Chinese or the Russians, and his ruthless attacks on them would ultimately dilute the power and hopes for radical social change that the organisation promised for so many black Americans in the chaotic, politically volatile moment offered by the massive social upheavals of the late 1960s in the wake of the government’s increasingly unpopular policies in Vietnam.
Cointel relentlessly targeted the Panthers — setting up the group’s leaders for dubious arrests and imprisonment, bombing its offices and, most infamously, essentially assassinating its Chicago chair, 21-year-old Fred Hampton, who was shot in his bed during a raid by law enforcement agencies on his Chicago home in the early hours of December 4 1969.
Hampton’s assassination is the fact that’s taken for granted in director Shaka King’s powerful film Judas and the Black Messiah, which examines the young radical’s short life and legacy through the eyes of the man who betrayed him — a young car thief turned FBI informant, William O’Neal. The latter was instrumental in providing crucial information about the layout of the Hampton house to his FBI handlers.
O’Neal was interviewed about his role in the killing for a 1990 documentary in which he claimed that, like Hampton, he’d been part of the struggle, but fighting on the other side and that history would judge him for his actions. Shortly before the documentary aired, O’Neal — seemingly racked by guilt — took his own life by intentionally walking into oncoming traffic. He was 40 years old.
King’s film, produced by Black Panther director Ryan Coogler and starring Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton and LaKeith Stanfield as O’Neal, pulls off the difficult balancing act of portraying its protagonists not as clearly defined symbols of good and evil but as young men caught up in a tumultuous, politically charged time. Though they make different decisions, both are products of similar circumstances.
Hampton, a naturally gifted orator and committed anti-capitalist, made the decision to devote his life to the pyrrhic task of fighting for a systematic revolution that he believed was necessary not only for the future of black Americans but for all those who struggled at the bottom of its mythic dream. O’Neal, a teenage car thief whose preferred MO was to pretend to be an FBI agent, was caught and given the impossible choice between a long prison sentence or relatively handsomely paid work as an informant.
As he begins to insert himself deeper into Hampton’s organisation and get closer to his target, O’Neal is torn between his increasing belief in the Panthers’ goals and social betterment projects and his own desire for self-preservation. Ultimately, O’Neal makes the right “American choice”, realising that cash is king and that Hoover’s hallowed American values are really built on the idea that every man is for himself.
Knowing the outcome of the story isn’t a hindrance to appreciating the film, nor to being engaged by its swift playing out of the battle between the two forces fighting it out in the ideological clouds above its characters’ heads. Anchored by two truly exceptional performances and filled with sharp, memorable supporting turns by a plethora of talented actors, it’s a richly realised slice of familiar history in the age of the war between the conservative US establishment and the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
As Hampton, Kaluuya manages to effortlessly shift between fiery public orator and gentle, slyly humorous young man thoroughly enjoying himself in the role of social activist and agitator. Stanfield, for his part, manages to inject O’Neal with an empathetic anxiety and introspection that makes it hard to write him off as merely a selfish betrayer.
Both actors have deservedly earned best supporting actor Oscar nominations for their work and whoever wins today, both of them, as well as the directors and producers of this provocative film, can be proud of the job they’ve done in telling Hampton’s story and the story of the complicated and messy times in which it happened.
’Judas and the Black Messiah’ is on circuit.